GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter discovering new parts of the Scoville scale.
You guys told us the old "what you missed this week" Sunday format sucked, and we listened.
Consider it dead, buried, and removed from the family tree.
And with that, we’d like to welcome you to Spicy Take Sunday.
Your weekly TLDR of the smartest, spiciest, and most unhinged moments across all Milk Road podcasts.
‘Cause sure, we all want to listen to every episode, but life happens. So every Sunday, we’ll pull the 5 biggest quotes, ideas, and hot takes, all in one place.
(Lettuce us know if you like this new format using the poll at the bottom of this edition!)
Here’s a preview of this week’s hot takes:
- 🚨 Ethereum is at risk
- 🔥 AI will break the internet
- 🌶️ UBI in the next 12 months?
Fuse is a $300M ARR energy company launching The Energy Network on Solana. Discover the future of energy now.
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK 🔥
Ethereum is at risk 🚨
Aryan Sheikhalian believes Ethereum is at risk of losing its execution environment (and with it, its economic value) to competitors like Solana.
That is, if the Ethereum Foundation doesn't get its act together and start shipping upgrades.
🎙️ Listen to the full Milk Road Daily episode here
AI agents will break the internet’s payment systems 🥊
Circle CTO, Nikhil Chandok, says the internet’s existing Rube Goldberg-like payment infrastructure won’t work for AI agents.
Instead, blockchain will power the long-running payment flows and machine-to-machine payments made by agents.
🎙️ Listen to the full Milk Road Daily episode here
Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the next 12 months? 💰
Kim Eisenberg sees the societal conversation around UBI advancing at a "very, very rapid pace" in the next 12 months.
The acceleration will be driven by the visible, heavy impacts on (you guessed it) the labor market.
🎙️ Listen to the full Milk Road AI episode here
A NEW FOUNDATION FOR THE GRID
Is this the most legit energy company to ever enter crypto?
Fuse is a $300M ARR UK utility powering 200,000+ homes - and now it’s launching The Energy Network, a new digital layer engineered to scale our grids and save billions in costs.
It’s one of the only three projects to receive a no-action letter in the past 5 years (and yeah, that’s a pretty big deal).
It’s real infrastructure, not speculation - connecting homes and devices to make power smarter, cheaper, and more efficient.
One of the highest-revenue DePIN projects in crypto - and it’s still pre-launch.
HOT TAKES OF THE WEEK (P2) 🔥
Freezing Russia’s assets was a "dramatic misstep" 🤦♂️
Macro legend, Grant Williams, believes the U.S. fundamentally damaged global trust in the dollar-based system when it froze out Russia in 2022.
He says it signaled to every central bank worldwide that they need to accelerate diversification away from U.S. Treasuries into neutral assets like gold.
🎙️ Listen to the full Milk Road Macro episode here
ETH should be priced like Amazon 📦
Haseeb Qureshi argues Ethereum's current Price-to-Earnings (PE) of ~380 is best compared to Amazon's during its early growth phase (which reached 600+).
Making the ‘Ethereum is overvalued’ argument a moot point.
🎙️ Listen to the full Milk Road Daily episode here
PRO INSIGHT OF THE WEEK 🔮
You know the term ‘stolen valor’? This is like that, but it’s ‘stolen alpha’.
This week I snuck into the PRO Discord and lifted some insights on your behalf.
As you may or may not know the Bank of Japan (BOJ) is meeting next week and word on the street is that they're going to hike rates.
Now, this is a big deal for a couple reasons, but most importantly because of something called the "Carry Trade Unwind".
For years, investors have borrowed money in Japan (where interest rates were near zero) to invest in high-growth assets like U.S. tech stocks or Bitcoin.
But if the BOJ raises rates, borrowing Yen becomes expensive and investors are forced to sell their U.S. stocks and crypto to pay back their Yen loans.
So, one of our PRO Members (rightfully so) was concerned about what this might mean for their portfolio and asked:
"Is the BOJ rate hike already priced into markets, or could it nuke all of our portfolios?"
And our Macro Research savant, Tomas, came to the rescue with this:
“Looks like the probability of a BoJ rate hike next week is about 80-90%, according to interest rate markets and economist predictions. So, yes, pretty widely expected.”
This means that if/when the rate hike hits next week, it shouldn't have much of an effect on your bags.
(Fingers Crossed.)
P.S. Want direct access to our PRO analyst team, so you can get your burning questions answered in real-time and make the right moves?
READ OUR DEBUT AI PRO REPORT, FREE! 🤖
👉 We released our first ever AI PRO report, and it’s a banger.
In it, Vincent (the new AI giga-brain at Milk Road) breaks down why the biggest investing opportunities in AI right now aren’t in the chips. They’re in the energy bottlenecks that the entire boom hinges on.
The best news? It’s completely free.
You can read it right here, and sign up to our AI newsletter to get the second PRO report when it drops December 28th.
From January, these reports will be behind a paywall so don't miss out!
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪
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Tether to tokenize? The company’s execs are considering it as they try to raise $20B at a $500B valuation.
Wen pardon? Do Kwon just copped 15 years for his part in the $40B Terra Luna fraud.
Question is… will they make a documentary out of it? A Hollywood director was just found guilty of scamming Netflix out of $11M, and spending it on crypto.
Why can everyone still see my wallet balance? That’s exactly what Zama is trying to fix by adding a privacy layer to existing chains.*
*this is sponsored content.
MILKY MEMES OF THE WEEK 🤣
